


In June, When Love Became

by theskyandsea



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: (but not much), (but not too slow), (so much of it), Alternate Universe - Crime Family, Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Alternate Universe - no dreamshare, And love, Discussions of Suicide, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Smut, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Found Love, Ghost Powers, Ghost roommate, Ghosts, M/M, Mal Cobb Deserves Better, Mal is a ghost, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Organized Crime, Paris when it sizzles, Platonic Cuddling, Slow Burn, Touch-Starved, ghost best friend, give mal happiness 2k20, platonic ot3, this is a story about friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:22:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25611259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskyandsea/pseuds/theskyandsea
Summary: It’s warm and the days are slow and long and golden and Arthur has burnt down a crime empire.He and the ghost of Mal share a flat in Paris where they’ve hidden away, sharing coffee and space and the tiny bee hotel Mal fell in love with.Their upstairs neighbour is Eames, a sometimes-art-thief-always-con-man, whose current grift is as a professional ghost hunter.The apartment is tiny, consisting of a single kitchen-bed-living room that is narrow enough that, if Arthur wants to, he can reach out and touch the front door and the balcony window at the same time. He generally doesn’t though, because Arthur is not one who believes in dwelling on his past riches. And the apartment is perfectly fine, especially when half the people who live in it are mostly incorporeal and have no need of sleep. Or food. Or the bathroom.Written for the Inception Big Bang 2020
Relationships: Arthur & Mal Cobb, Arthur & Mal Cobb & Eames, Arthur/Eames (Inception), Mal Cobb & Eames
Comments: 16
Kudos: 59
Collections: Inception Big Bang 2020





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> Incredibly beautiful art by salt (ffc1cb) [here](https://ffc1cb.tumblr.com/post/625160483697311744/my-art-for-this-years-inceptionbigbang-had-the)
> 
> So so many thank yous to give, so little time!
> 
> To LadyVader, who cheered me on the whole time I was writing this, and who pointed out that my first attempt at plot was... very confusing.
> 
> To salt, my brilliant artist, it's been so exciting sharing this with you! Thank you for picking me as your writer!
> 
> To dreaminghigher and the rest of the Inceptiversary team, thank you for putting this whole fest on! It's been so fun!
> 
> And, to N and F, who are the inspiration for the friendship in this fic. Love you tons.
> 
> WARNINGS: there is discussion of suicide in this fic, as well as a couple of murders, and talk about phycological torture (non graphic). Feel free to [message](https://theskyandsea.tumblr.com) me for more details if you need them <3

_ I hear your heart beating in your chest _

_ The world slows till there's nothing left _

_ Skyscrapers look on like great, unblinking giants _

_ In those heavy days in June _

_ When love became an act of defiance _

_ Hold on to each other _

_ Hold on to each other _

_ Hold on to each other _

_ Hold on to each other _

_ Florence + the Machine, June _

Arthur is on his way home from the cemetery when he first notices the dirt. In the shade of the towering churchyard wall, with its worn inscriptions and ancient stones, he hadn’t been able to see just how much of the graveyard had clung to his clothes. He looks at it all with some distaste, although, if he is fair, dirty clothes cannot really be helped when doing clandestine digging. 

He makes his way through the muggy street and up the stairs of the decaying old building to his and Mal’s apartment. 

Inside, even with the door to the balcony closed, is nearly as hot as outside. Mal is flopped down on the bed like a rather dramatic plant in need of watering. She twists her head around to smile at him but doesn’t otherwise move.

The two of them are new to living in Paris. Or, at least, they're new to this part of Paris, this part that needs an extra metro fare to get to, away from the glittering opulence of the 6ème arrondissement that they were once been used to. Now, the important things are that rent was cheap and they're unlikely to run into any family.

The apartment is tiny, consisting of a single kitchen-bed-living room that is narrow enough that, if Arthur wants to, he can reach out and touch the front door and the balcony window at the same time. He generally doesn’t though, because Arthur is not one who believes in dwelling on his past riches. And the apartment is perfectly fine, especially when half the people who live in it are mostly incorporeal and have no need of sleep. Or food. Or the bathroom.

He carries his cheerful yellow and daisy covered suitcase and shakes it out off the balcony. Mal drifts behind him, coming to lean against the flower pots.

He says, “There. You have a grave again. I hope you like it here because that was hard work, even with just the bones.”

Mal blows him a kiss. “Merci, mon cher. It does feel good to be settled again.”

Arthur smiles tiredly at her and goes back to the door, picking up the pot of marigolds he’d also acquired for them. He’s sticky with the heat and sweat, his hair working hard to escape its gel and the direct sun on the balcony is too much for him. He puts the marigolds by Mal’s little bee hotel, and looks to see if any bees have chosen to move in. None have yet, but it’s still early days. He goes inside.

He takes a cold shower in their minuscule bathroom, crouching over because of the slope in the ceiling. When he’s done, he puts on a clean shirt, feeling reasonably himself again. The feeling only lasts a moment though, because the second he leaves the bathroom the heat barrels into him again, leaving him damp and sleepy. He walks over to Mal where she’s standing by the sink. He leans into her, and a little bit through her, until she corporealises into solidity. She ruffles his non-gelled hair and kisses his head.

He sighs. “What are we going to do Mal?”

“We will figure it out. Together. We have made a start and made it here and that is enough for tonight.”

“How did I not see what was happening?” This is as much to himself as to Mal. It's the question that’s been ringing in his head for days as they ran across countries and an ocean.

Mal doesn’t answer. He doesn’t expect her to.

What she does instead is pull out his phone and queue up some music. She pulls him into her arms and they sway to the songs, supporting each other.

Above them, a light flickers and Mal flinches, pulling back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to—“

Arthur just holds her close. “It’s okay, Mal. It’s okay. If it blows we can get another.”

She settles against him, her chin resting on his shoulder and Arthur takes a moment to silently curse the world that had so thoroughly killed his lovely Mal, first her mind, then her spirit, and finally her body. But, he vows, he will die before he makes Mal give up her soul.

*

In the flat directly above Arthur and Mal, Eames is lonely.

It’s morning, the sun poking around the heavy curtains that work hard to keep the flat if not cool, at least a little less hellish. Dust dances in the sunbeams, providing little distraction from Eames’ contemplation of the ugly underpainting of his latest forgery. It’s technically a passion project, but Eames hasn’t had any passion for it in a number of weeks. It sits in the flat like a very rectangular and quiet roommate, watching him watch it.

He gives up on painting for the day and drinks the shitty coffee he bought accidentally and didn’t have the energy to return. He does some mindless work on a couple of passports for Denis, the dickish head of a local small-time gang. 

He can’t remember the last time he saw someone as himself. When working he throws around names and accents like he’s a one man improv troupe, which is safe but isolating. The other people in the building, if they know him at all, know him as Charles (still a lie but one closer to home — there is a Charles Eames, he just happens to be Eames’ father), or simply, as l’Anglais; the Englishman. 

There is the dinging alert of an incoming email. It’s a PayPal deposit notification, the sender thanking him for ridding her of her nasty ghost problem and making good on her promise to pay him a truly absurd amount of money. Especially absurd given that all he had done was throw salt at doorways and shout at the empty rooms. And set her up with a good therapist, but he generally throws that in for free.

When he’d started the ghost hunting scam he’d thought it would be a lark, going into dark houses and indulging in theatrics for a bit of cash. But the reality was that the people generally had a real sadness in them, some tragedy forgotten by everyone else, and what they wanted was someone to talk to. 

Eames accepts the money and leaves his phone on the table. That particular woman had sworn she’d been visited by the ghost of her dead daughter, watching her sleep. The work had been deeply sad — the loneliness of the three of them, the mother, the absent daughter, the countryless Englishman all reflecting into each other. 

He goes outside with the shitty coffee and a toaster pastry. The heat is oppressive and he is sweating through his undershirt in minutes, but it’s better than being reminded of ghosts. The flowers in his flowerpot are blooming, morning glories tumbling down towards the street in vibrant pinks and purples. A few bees are buzzing around them, fat and fluffy bumble bees awkwardly trying to get pollen and tiny solitary bees flitting from flower to flower.

One bumblebee sniffs around Eames’ coffee inquiringly. He gives it a long look. “Hello there.”

The bee buzzes, flying closer. Eames interprets this as a complaint that he is not currently made of flowers, nor is he in possession of pollen.

He grimaces apologetically. “Sorry about that, I can see about getting another pot of flowers this afternoon.”

The bee accepts this graciously and lands in Eames’ hair for a brief rest.

He is on his way home from the market, a few hours later, when he runs into some errant strawberries and a loaf of bread, thankfully still wrapped in paper, laying on the stairs up to the door of his building. He blinks at them and then looks up again and realises there’s actually a young woman fretting about, trying to pick up her groceries.  _ Trying _ being the operative word because every time she goes to pick something up she gets it a few inches off the ground and then the food slips through her fingers again.

Eames takes it on himself to rescue her from her food-based mishaps, scooping up the bread and strawberries, as well as the rest of the food and putting it easily in his spare bag. 

The woman looks at him. “I was going to pick them up eventually,” she says, although Eames is not entirely sure she would have been able to. “I just sometimes have trouble with holding things. It takes energy and concentration, you know how it is.”

Though Eames does not, he nods. “Of course. I’m just happy I could help.”

She also nods, taking the bag. “It's just this heat, making everything drowsy and move like molasses. It’s sapping all my energy and will to be solidly myself. I am utterly exhausted by it.” Her gaze had wandered as she talked about the heat but she abruptly looked him dead in the eye. “You must be very hot as well, in this place without air-conditioning. How do you bear it?”

For the first time, Eames really looks at her, not just at her inability to hold things. She’s got a fierce look on her face but there’s a hint of a smile in her eyes, a sense of a love of dramatics and complaining. For the first time in a very long time, he looks at someone and thinks he might like to be their friend.

He says, “Do you want to come up for a coffee?” not really expecting her to, just because he wants to know that he made an effort, that he didn’t just let a chance at a friend slide by. He knows it’s ridiculous, that he doesn’t know anything about her but a coordination problem and this idea that she might be a bit of a kindred spirit, but he can’t bear to just let her leave.

She studies him. “I do not want to sleep with you.”

He shakes his head and means it. “Just coffee. Just talking. If it makes you feel better, I don’t quite swing your way.”

“Ah! Just like Arthur!” She smiles widely for this first time, full of love and openness and a sentimental fondness. 

Eames’ heart picks up its beating. What he wouldn’t give for someone to look that happy when talking about him, even when it’s so offhand. “Who’s Arthur?”

“Oh, Arthur. He is my most lovely friend in all the world. You will have to meet him. You would love him.”

The casual assuredness that there would be more meetings, that she maybe saw the same things in him that he did in her catches in Eames’ mind. He smiles back at her. 

“I’m Eames.” He means to say Charles, but it is Eames that comes out of his mouth.

“Mal.” She extends her hand to shake. Eames takes it.

They go up to his flat and Eames makes coffee which she doesn’t drink and offers food she doesn’t eat, but she sits on his counter and they talk and laugh and he thinks that maybe he doesn’t feel so alone after all.

When she leaves, one of his light switches has broken.

*

Arthur dreams. And because he does, so can Mal.

She came into his dreams and lived there for the night, a dream of being out in the desert at dawn, the cold and the sharpness and the feeling that there is something chasing him, just out of sight. They huddle behind dull rocks, even their breathing seeming like too much noise. The thing chasing is going to hear and find them and do whatever dream monsters do with their victims.

But morning comes before it finds them and Arthur wakes up, drenched in sweat, tangled in the sheet. Mal sits next to him on the bed, face drawn.

Arthur turns onto his side to look at her. She is looking at her toes, which she is flexing and pointing, the only way poised and monied daughters are allowed to release tension.

“I think I did something wrong when we left. I’m worried I didn’t clear our trail enough,” he says. The creeping feeling is still crawling up his spine, reminding him of the chaos of the night they’d left, the hasty fire setting, the frantic rush to grab papers, the desperate hope that the cameras would melt in the heat.

Mal doesn’t reply and the tension settles between them.

Eventually she puts on a smile and stretches, her long arms reaching up and up before settling on Arthurs hair. She ruffles it. “Let’s make it a good morning, mon cher. It is too beautiful to dwell on those horrors.”

Arthur turns and presses a friendly kiss to her hand. “You’re right, as always. Let’s get breakfast. No use worrying on an empty stomach.”

She studies him. “You’re still worried.” It is not a question.

“Of course.”

She laughs in a little exhale and goes to set up the espresso maker. Arthur watches her move about the tiny kitchen and something in him settles a little.

She moves like the dancer she was, humming a song under her breath. The sun, though hot, lights up the apartment, catching on their two burner stove and yellow plug in kettle. Most of the things that came with the apartment are yellow in some way. The chipping paint on the espresso maker that Mal settles on the stove, the few heavy pots hanging above the sink, the magnets on the fridge, the inside of the door. It imbues the tiny space with a forceful cheerfulness that had been so welcome to both of them. Yes, it is on the cusp of too small, yes, it’s hot, yes the walk up the stairs is a fall waiting to happen, but it feels like home in a way Arthur’s previous places just haven’t.

He goes over to help, pulling out their pint of milk and some eggs for an omelette. Mal smiles at him, working through the ritual of coffee: grinding beans, setting up the pot, frothing the milk. Though she can’t consume any of it, she always insists on making it.  _ It’s grounding _ , she’d told Arthur once.  _ It’s like when I was alive and woke up. Morning isn’t right without the smell of coffee. _

They bump into each other as they work in companionable silence. It’s only once they are settled at the table and Arthur is mostly done with his eggs that he breaks it.

“Do you remember anything else today?” 

It is a delicate thing, the subject of Mal’s memory, but the daily question is important. Since waking as a ghost she’s been sure of her sense of self and her memories of her childhood, but there is a precarious bridge between her 20th birthday and her death the day before her 22nd. In life, the family had noted a decline in her mental health — or, as one member had put it less than tactfully, she’d gone crazy. Her memories were hazy. Some could be corroborated by Arthur, but others were impossible, populated with the dead or missing or people who never were.

She shook her head. “Nothing new. But it is so strange. Since I became a ghost all my thoughts make sense again. No one popping up, no whispers in my ear. I thought you were supposed to become less of yourself when you die.”

Arthur has nothing to say to that, but he leans over and gives her a sort of half hug, impeded a bit by the presence of the table.

Mal stares off out the window, lost in her own thoughts. Arthur finishes his breakfast.

Eventually Mal shakes herself off. “Let’s leave it. There is nothing more to be gained from thinking of it all this morning. Instead, let me tell you of the charming man I met last night.”

And so she does, and they laugh and smile, but later Arthur watches her as he goes through his to-do list and she thinks he isn’t looking. She’s shaking, only half visible and passing her hand through the espresso pot, swearing under her breath in French. Her grief seems private and Arthur doesn’t know what he can do so he just makes a space beside him on the bed.

She comes over, eyes tired, and settles down next to him. They don’t talk. The apartment is an oven but the sheets are cool and a wisp of a breeze is lazing around the window.

*

Eames is studiously doing nothing when Mal appears in his doorway mid afternoon. Doing nothing, he knows, is usually a good look on him, full of indolent charm and a smattering of sexiness, but the past few days have melted him somewhat and he’s afraid looks more like a sweaty sickbed inmate than a lounging lord. 

Mal looks exactly as she had yesterday, lovely and clear and, despite her complaints about the heat, completely sweat-free. She is also wearing the same dress.

He smirks at her. “Are you doing a walk of shame?”

She looks at him in faint confusion.

“The dress. Nothing to change into after a little tete-a-tete with a special someone?”

She rolls her eyes. “I like this dress.”

She steps into the flat and arranges herself on a plush footstool that sometimes doubles as a table. Sharing it with her is a coil of blackened electric cord and the remains of his alarm clock. She stares at it.

“Oh, you can just put that anywhere. There must’ve been a power surge early this morning that fried it. I was hoping it would be an easy fix but I might just have to get a new one.”

Mal is still looking at it with something like sadness in her eyes.

“It’s alright Mal, it’s nothing to do with you. It’s not very pretty anyways. I can steal something much nicer.”

She snorts and finally looks away. “How is the world today?”

“The world is as it always is. Which is to say, quite a bit of bother. I’ve been hiding from it in here and you are welcome to join me.” He reaches out and tangles their fingers together. Her hands are cool against his palm.

She doesn’t seem inclined to say anything so he continues. "And how is your darling Arthur this afternoon?”

“He is out making terrible friends in the hope they will solve some of our problems.” She sighs.

“You know you can ask me if you need anything, right, love? I know we haven’t known each other long, but I’m happy to help you.” He means it too, which is a wholly new feeling.

She moves from the footstool to the couch, leaning back against his legs. “You are too generous.”

He laughs. “I believe that’s the first time anyone has ever said that to me.”

She smiles but there is still a bit of melancholy hanging about her shoulders.

They sit in silence for a moment, Eames waiting patiently for her to be comfortable talking.

Finally, “Eames, do you ever feel like you’re forgetting something? Something big and life changing?” Her voice is small.

Eames wishes it was less hot so he could envelope her in a hug. “Not really. I don’t have any gaps, if that’s what you’re asking.”

She nods. “It’s just, I used to be sick in my mind and confused real life with my dreams and other impossible things. I’m better now but everything from that time still bleeds together. Some of it is just a wash. Some of it Arthur can help me sort out but other things haunt me.”

Eames’ heart hurts a little. Mal is so lovely and strong and funny but right now she’s small and lost and alone. So — fuck the heat — he pulls her into a hug. She lets out a sigh and turns her face into him.

There is a knock at the door and Eames lets Mal go. She wipes at her face and he gallantly pretends he doesn’t see.

At the door is an older woman who lives in the flat across from him. She’s brisk and very Parisian. 

The second he opens the door she starts speaking in rapid French. “Bonjour M. Charles. I understand you have experience handling ghost problems.” She waits, expectantly, for his nod. He does. “Good. I have been speaking to the other occupants and we have come to the conclusion that this building has a haunting, which we would like resolved as soon as possible.” She hands him a stack of euros. “I trust this will be enough.”

Mal makes a sound like she’s choking.

Eames blinks at the woman and then recovers himself. “Of course Madame. I will look into it later today.”

She nods, satisfied and leaves.

Eames walks back to Mal, who is looking at him, wide-eyed. He winks at her and puts the money in his back pocket. “It’s not as fun as I thought it would be when I started, this ghost hunting business, but it pays, especially here, with the weight of history and revolutions and blood in the streets.” He shrugs.

Mal laughs, high and clear. “Do you ever find any ghosts?”

Eames laughs too. “Of course not, but don’t tell them that.”

Mal leans back against the balcony and laughs until she’s gasping for breath.

*

Arthur takes a winding walk home, swearing profusely under his breath. Denis, the man he’d gone to talk to about getting himself a new identity had been, in addition to altogether disagreeable, worse than useless. He’d straight up laughed in Arthur’s face when he’d made some polite inquiries about his credentials, and told him that the Englishman who they outsource the making of IDs to is called ‘Dick Bigums’. Arthur is still not entirely sure if that had been another insult directed at him or somebody playing a joke on Denis, since Denis’ grasp of the English language seemed to be mostly limited to the word ‘Fuck’ and a passable impression of Robin Williams in  _ Aladdin. _

All in all, Arthur’s request had been denied when it became clear that despite his very nice suit he would not be able to pay even half of the price of a driving licence, let alone a passport and birth certificate as well. Denis had made him an offer to work off the cost as a part of their crime ring, but Arthur had refused.

As he’s getting closer to home the creeping feeling of being watched settles over him: a man at a cafe looking away just as Arthur looks at him, another man walking the same route staying a few meters behind him.

A truck parked on the street outside the apartment, two people just sitting in the cab.

Arthur adds it all to his list of worries.

He’s about to go up the steps when he changes his mind and turns around, nearly knocking the man behind him over. He gets a good look at his face, but it’s no one he recognises. “Desole, monsieur.”

The man grunts and turns away.

Arthur jogs to the nearest hardware store and loses himself in the maze of shelves and tools and bobbins of wire. It’s been a while since he’s had to make bugs from scratch, but he’s sure it will all come back to him.

*

After Mal disappears on a walk Eames finds himself at sixes and sevens, pacing and unable to focus. He wanders around, turning on the kettle for some tea, then turning it off again when he decides he’s too hot, then turning it on again because a bit of caffeine might help his focus. It’s in the middle of this cycle that he sees the guy leaning against his truck outside just looking at the block of flats and smoking. Eames frowns at him.

Eventually, tea in hand, he decides that he will do a spot of ghost hunting after all. Even if it’s a general waste of time, he can make it into a nice story for Mal tomorrow.

He pulls out his ghost hunting box from under his bed. To his surprise, when he opens it, his EMF reader is already spiking. He gives it a little shake, which does nothing, and turns it off. Or tries to, but can't because the switch is already in the off position. He toggles it a few times and manages to power it down.

The spirit box is exactly how he left it, off and quiet. To test the batteries he turns it on and plugs it into his speaker. The white noise is violently loud, but it is picking up a static voice singing a disjointed  _ Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien _ . He looks at it in alarm and turns it off. The singing continues and he breathes a sigh of relief. It’s just Mal singing in her flat below him mixing with the sound of the spirit box. She must have decided to not go on that walk after all.

He takes his bag of gear and starts poking around in the halls. The EMF’s readings are immediately higher than any he’s ever seen. He wonders if he should get a geiger counter to make sure there isn’t a radiation leak nearby.

The readings climb as he goes down to the next level. They lead him in two directions. The first goes directly to Mal and Arthur’s door and he lets himself think  _ what the fuck _ for a minute.

Then he realises that what the reader is picking up is actually a tiny surveillance bug stuck to the frame. He rips it off, crushes it, and knocks on the door. No one answers, so he resolves to talk to Mal later.

The other path from the EMF points directly at the church across the street. Eames finds absolutely nothing alarming about that. Nothing. 

It also takes him past the truck, with its rusty frame and men sitting low inside just watching the building. Eames pauses, pretending to fiddle with his equipment, just close enough to catch a few words of their conversation. One of them is talking into a phone, voice carrying through the open window.

“Jean’s such a fucking dumbness. He was right on him and then loses him inside a goddamn store. We’ll have to see if we can get him when he gets home.”

Eames coughs. The men in the truck turn and see him and roll up their windows. Eames resolves to also talk to Mal about this.

Suddenly the EMF reader spikes, the screen going red with a warning, as if annoyed he’d gotten distracted. Eames gives the box an absent-minded pat to pacify it and resumes his trek to the church.

Or rather, to his dismay, to the cemetery next to the church.

As cemeteries go, it’s a pretty nice one, clearly cared for, graves flowered and paths stoned. Ancient trees watch over the plots, their branches creating lace like shadows on the ground. Eames picks his way past gravestones with their angels and doves and carved skulls, following the path of the EMF.

It leads him away from the carefully maintained grid of graves and towards a shady spot by the stone fence surrounding the yard. There are niches with crumbling stonework cut into it, moss growing up, slowly swallowing the lower rocks.

And there, in front of it, is a spot of freshly turned earth. A small shovel leans against a nearby tree, almost hidden in the shadow.

“Holy shit,” says Eames. He then says it a few more times to really stress his feeling.

He considers just turning around and also the possibility of moving to a different neighbourhood.

But. There is a pull in him. He wants to know what’s happening. He brings the EMF reader over the dirt.

It spikes, then shorts out, the whole screen going dark.

Eames closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. He’s being ridiculous. Probably someone just buried… some sort of electrical equipment. In a cemetery. That makes sense.

He sighs. The desire to know and the desire to avoid nightmares briefly war within him. The desire to know wins.

He looks around to make sure he’s the only one in the cemetery and grabs the shovel. He double checks that the salt that came with his ghost hunting kit is still in his pocket, then starts digging.

It takes him less than two minutes to find the skull. 

But what a two minutes. The sweat beading down his back. Listening to make sure no one’s coming. Trying to convince himself that this is all just a coincidence, that all he’s going to find is some garbage or maybe a dead pet.

But in the end, the skull stares up at him, undoubtedly and uncomfortably human.

He has no idea what to do now that he’s found it. Should he call the police? Should he go to the church and find a caretaker?

He slides closer to the skull as if it would give him answers.

Someone clears their throat behind him.

He whips around. Mal is leaning against the nearest headstone, still in the same dress. The golden light of the sunset streams over her. “If you wouldn’t mind terribly, I’d prefer if you would stop disturbing my grave. Arthur worked ever so hard to dig it for me again.”

Eames can't breath. Mal sighs and he can see through her, he can  _ see through her _ . “The dirt, mon cher. Let us put it back. Then we can have coffee and Arthur and I will explain everything.” 


	2. Part Two

As the sunlight begins to fade, Arthur sweeps the apartment for bugs. Nothing inside seems disturbed but he combs through anyways. There is one on the floor of the balcony like someone had thrown it up from the street, half covered in dirt from a flowerpot. He breaks it. Once he’s certain the apartment is safe, he starts the process of bandaging his hands. There are dozens of little cuts that need ointment, stinging under the alcoholic wipes. He got them climbing up the bricks at the back of the building and into a maintenance window to avoid the men out front, a rough and hot climb that left him dishevelled and sweaty for the second time in as many days. Paris, so far, is not a good look on him. 

Once his hands are no longer bleeding, he opens his bag from the hardware store. Inside is a treasure trove of shiny connectors and colourful wires. He spreads it out over the table, finds his miniature screwdriver, and starts assembling. The light is just barely coming in, the road dark and still, and Arthur is meditative, lost in the simple way everything fits together.

He can hear Mal coming up the stairs, her laugh echoing around the building. Arthur is not entirely sure if the disembodied sound is a function of being a ghost or just the shitty design of the building.

It registers that Mal is not only laughing, but talking to someone. Arthur looks over at the door and frowns.

Mal floats through the door, as she is wont to do, since she cannot reliably hold onto keys. He gives her a questioning look. She winks and unlocks the door.

On the other side of the door is the hottest man Arthur has ever seen. He’s just as dishevelled as Arthur, but wears it like he’s a conquering hero rather than a grubby teen.

He does, however, also look like he’s had a bit of a shock. Mal waves him in but he doesn’t move.

“Arthur, this is Eames. Eames, this is my lovely Arthur. Eames,” she gives Arthur a significant look. “has just discovered my body, so I’ve brought him up for some tea and conversation.”

Eames nods at Arthur. 

Mal continues, to Arthur, “Tea is what English men like when they may come into contact with emotions.”

Eames looks like he might dispute this, but Arthur heads him off. He stands up. “Good evening, Mr. Eames. I’m sure you have some questions."

Finally, Eames comes in. The addition of a third body is almost more than the apartment can handle, but Arthur puts all of his electronics on the bed and shoves the table more into the wall.

Eames looks at the half-made bugs with interest. “So you’re the famous Arthur?”

Arthur cuts a look at Mal. She smirks. Eames leans against the door and sighs.

Mal flips the kettle on and opens the cupboards.

Arthur says, “Do we even have tea?”

Mal swears and starts pulling things out.

“I’m fine without it,” says Eames.

Mal swears again. “I’ll be right back.”

She floats up through the ceiling. 

Arthur watches her in faint alarm.

Eames smiles at him. “She’s just going to my flat.” They both consider the ceiling for a moment, then he continues, “She talks about you all the time, but she never said how cute you are.”

Arthur looks at him. Eames curls a smile.

“You just found out your friend is a ghost and you’re thinking about what I look like?”

Eames closes his eyes. “Honestly darling, focusing on how pretty you are is one of the few things keeping me sane right now.”

There’s a scuffle outside and they look to see Mal scrambling over the balcony, a box of tea in her hands. “I grabbed the first one I found in your cupboard. You really do have a lot of tea.”

“You have to or they take your passport away. Tea police spot-checks are a dangerous thing, you know.”

Arthur turns away to hide a smile.

Eames takes over making tea now that proper bags have been procured. Mal, leaning back against the counter, mouths to Arthur,  _ you think he’s handsome, no? _

Arthur blushes.

They sit down at the table. Or, really, they try to. There are only two seats, so Mal and Eames sit in the chairs while Arthur is cross legged on the bed, watching them both.

And then, it is finally time for the story to be told.

It is a story neither Mal or Arthur have told before.

Mal looks at Arthur and there is a little bit of fear in her, a worried crease to her eyes. Arthur’s heart is beating a little bit fast too. He grips her hand, strong and hoping she can read his thoughts.  _ I’m here for you. We will get through this together. _

Arthur takes a steadying breath. He puts on a smile. “What do you want to know, Eames?”

Eames looks straight at him. “Why are people stalking you?”

Arthur and Mal both do a double take. Mal says, “You found my body and you don’t want to know how I died?”

Eames looks at her, face graver than Arthur’s seen in their whole half-hour of knowing each other. “I absolutely want to know how you died. But I'm betting that these men watching you are all tangled up in it.”

Mal nods, quiet. She squeezes Arthur’s hand.

He says, “Why don’t we start at the beginning.” He smiles gently at Mal. “It’s your story.”

She takes a deep breath and straightens in her chair, squaring her shoulders. “My friend, before we were here, before I was dead, Arthur and I were part of the Cobol crime family in New York.”

Eames rocks back in his chair.

Mal smiles slightly. “Yes, those Cobols. George Cobol is my grandfather on my mother’s side. Growing up I was very rich and very spoiled and my mother told me sparkling bedtime stories about how our family set things right when the police wouldn’t, how we were beloved by the common people, how even if sometimes we did things that seemed wrong at the time, they were in service of the greater good.”

She lets go of Arthur’s hand so she can sketch out her story in the air. “I was given dance lessons and horse riding lessons and gun lessons. Things were good, and I had no reason to believe anything would ever change. My grandfather sent me abroad to the best finishing school in Paris so I would learn to be worldly and demure and ready to bring the next generation of Cobols up, as my mother had.”

Eames snorts. “And that worked out great I see.”

Mal laughs, her face for a moment clear of the wistful sadness that had been forming. “It nearly did. When I came back to America I was not particularly demure but I was good at pretending, and I was ready to take my place in the family.”

“Our grandfather was very proud,” says Arthur.

Mal laughs. “He was. He loved to show me off to potential suitors, people from other crime families he wanted to connect with, the sons of politicians he wanted his claws in. He made it clear that I had a choice — he did not care to force me into marriage, but he also wasn’t averse to pushing people into my path and hoping I took a liking to one of them.”

“Did you?” Eames is lit by the last legs of the sunset, just the sad set of his mouth visible against the dark outline of his body.

Arthur reaches back and turns on the yellow bedside lamp, the tenuous feeling in the apartment too fragile for the harshness of the ceiling light.

Mal sighs. “I might’ve, if things hadn’t gone wrong. The day I started going crazy was my 20th birthday.” 

She looks down and squeezes her hands into fists. They all wait a moment for her to be ready. “My mother had planned a big party to celebrate me becoming an adult and had convinced my grandfather to use his big house with the ballroom and the Tiffany chandelier and the thousand rooms to sneak off to as people are wont to do with too much champagne and romantic lighting.”

Eames huffs a little and makes an abortive motion with his hand, like he’s reaching out to hold her.

“Before everyone arrived I was there in my party dress, a $15000 mass of silk and hand embroidered roses, and I was wandering the halls, imagining what wonders would be happening in the empty rooms in a few hours.”

Arthur looks at her sharply; this is more than she’s ever been able to tell him. She looks back steadily, taking a breath, and nods. She remembers. Somehow something has changed and she can remember. Now it's his turn to resist pulling her close.

“And then I opened a door and saw my grandfather cutting a man's fingers off.” Mal’s whole body is tight and one of her hands is gripping her arm, making little white indentations in her skin. Her eyes are glassy, staring at a point on the wall. “They were after information, some sort of new drug that could act like a truth serum and they cut his fingers off knuckle by knuckle and I felt something in me break.” 

Arthur closes his eyes. It makes a terrible sort of sense, the violence, the truth drug. It fits with what she’s already told him, what he suspects. It’s another thing on the long list of what he’d missed.

“After that my mind fractured around me. I started seeing impossible things — people long dead, people doing things they never would, voices whispering terrible things to me. I was taken to all the best doctors, every person money could buy, but all their tests came back inconclusive. They tried medication and some things seemed to work but then the voices would come back or I’d talk about my day and how I saw somebody who was on the other side of the country, or conversations we’d had that she couldn’t remember.”

Eames is silent, his face unreadable.

Mal runs her hands through her hair.

"I started dreaming, terrible dreams of being the only person alive in a city for decades, dreams about waiting for trains that would never come and the terrible things that happened while I waited. I’d dream I was going to kill myself, that I would be standing on a hotel balcony and I would begin to fall and I would scream. And then I would wake up. Until one day, when I woke up a ghost.”

She takes a breath and Arthur remembers what she can’t. The concerned whispers around the family as Mal slipped closer to the edge every day, the terrified call the night her mother found her on that hotel balcony ledge, to Arthur instead of the police, because he was thorough and had cleaned up deaths before. The work to make her death discrete. Socially acceptable. 

And days later, the funeral, everyone in black and only talking in circles. The fancy casket with its mahogany and chrome details, which had been such a pain to dig up.

Mal reaches out and grabs Arthur's hand. “Arthur and I were not particularly close for most of my life — we existed as cogs in a whole, but cogs that were involved in different processes and only saw each other at Christmas and Easter and birthdays and courthouses. But I had it in my head that he was reliable and moral despite his job of killing people.”

Eames looks at Arthur. 

“I have never killed anyone who did not deserve it.” He pauses. “I think.”

Mal squeezes his hand.

“After I woke up dead, it took awhile for my memories to start to come back. I still don't have all of them. But I did know one thing, one thing that burned in me clearer than any hazy thoughts. My grandfather was doing something terrible. Worse than anything I’d grown up knowing. I didn’t know what it was but the thoughts consumed me. I had to know. I had to stop him. And so I followed him. I stuck myself to his shadow and I watched. I watched him have breakfast with my grandmother and meetings about the affairs of the city with the police chief and hire Arthur to kill someone causing a problem. Things I knew, things I expected. And then, at night, I watched him say goodbye to his usual cronies and let men I’d never seen before into the house by a back door. I followed them into the basement, through a secret tunnel and into a room. One of the men was handcuffed. I saw them bring out their tools from a briefcase.”

She shudders. “And then everything was too much and I closed my eyes, wishing to be anywhere else. When I opened them I was standing on top of my grave.”

She pauses for a moment, drawn into herself. Arthur feels his heart break a little, in the same way it had when she’d first told him. He looks at Eames, who is silent and frowning, staring down at his hands.

Mal says, “I think I cried. It was the first time since becoming a ghost that I’d felt something other than anger and a need for information. And then I started planning. It is easy to come up with a plan when you are a ghost. You don’t need sleep. And when you were wronged, the thoughts and the anger keep you focused like nothing else can.”

The lamp flickers and they all freeze. Mal takes a few deep breaths and slowly the flickers peter out, leaving the light steady. 

“I went back to following my grandfather, but this time I paid attention to key-codes, to where he kept the drugs and the papers. I couldn’t find the briefcase the men had brought, but I found files with schematics and case reports of what they’d done and what they’d found. And then I went to Arthur.”

She smiles at him. “I had this knowledge but I couldn’t do anything about it. I hadn’t yet learned to influence the world around me, so I needed a pair of reliable hands.”

“She found me and laid out everything she knew — the drugs, the torture, the secrets being kept, even from me. I’d had a growing feeling that something was wrong for a while — grandfather was getting angrier and disappearing for long stretches with no one else, or I’d be told to kill someone with flimsier and flimsier reasons. When Mal told me, it made sense.” Of course, Arthur leaves out the part where Mal had shown up in his mirror like she was following a horror movie playbook and he had actually honest-to-god screamed.

Eames looks at him and Arthur has the peculiar feeling that Eames is looking directly into his soul. He shudders and looks away.

“So what did you do?”

Mal grins, a little bit feral around the edges. “Oh, what did we do?” She looks at Arthur.

He smiles back at her.

“We burnt the whole house down. Destroyed all the computers and files so he couldn’t make any copies.” There’s a little pull in his stomach thinking about it. The fire consuming everything, the scream of glass melting and fracturing. Running through the woods with Mal at his heels.

“Of course, this was after we picked a few choice pieces of evidence.”

“And what cash and guns we could.” It made things harder, trying to escape the property with an overstuffed briefcase and guns slung over his back, bumping against his thighs with every step.

Mal smiles. “There was also some grave robbing, somewhere in there.”

“Is it really grave  _ robbing _ if the person in the grave gave you permission?” says Eames with a smile in his eyes.

They laugh.

The story settles between them and they let it sit in the quiet of the night. A car passes on the road below them, headlights cutting through the dark, illuminating the churchyard. Eames finishes his tea. Arthur watches him. He wonders if Eames realises how much of Arthur’s and Mal’s lives he holds in his hands. Arthur, on the whole, is disinclined towards trusting people, but this man who Mal brought home, Arthur gets it. He sees what Mal saw, the gentleness, the kindness emanating from him, the way he looks at Mal, full of love. 

Arthur’s heart clenches at the idea of adding someone new and breakable to his life. He looks Eames in the eyes. “You aren’t going to share our secrets.” It isn’t a question.

Eames says, “No.” He takes a breath. “I’ve lived in Paris for a while now, because it’s the default for artists and people who steal art, which are the same thing, really. I think I’ve been drifting for so long I can’t bring myself to care about anything. I can be alone, I can live with myself, but I think I just realised right now just how lonely I’ve been. No, I'm not going to share your secrets. But, if you want, I’d like to help.” 

Arthur nods, feeling strangely undone.

Eames is still looking at him. “I don’t have much in the way of money but I can give you a new identity.”

Arthur is frozen. Would it really be just this simple? That Mal would find him, and that Eames would have the skills to help?

Eames raises his eyebrow in a silent question.  _ Well? _

Arthur nods.  _ Yes. _ Mal squeezes his hand.

Outside the stars are coming out and the sweet smell of the night-blooming jasmine that some romantic soul had planting long ago drifts in through the balcony.

Eames says, “But you never answered my question. Who are the guys out front?”

Arthur sighs. "I think they’re some of Grandfather's shadier men. I didn’t get us out as cleanly as I would have liked."

Eames nods. “That would explain this.” He pulls out a crumpled bug. 

Arthur looks at it grimly. He can feel Mal’s alarm pulse through the room as the light flickers again.

She says, “You didn’t tell me?”

“I haven’t had the chance. I only noticed them on my way home. I’ve got some bugs of my own I'm putting in, but I’ll need to come up with a better plan.”

“No,” Mal corrects him, “we will.” She leans over and presses a kiss to his temple.

Arthur yawns. It catches and spreads.

“It will keep until morning, won’t it?” asks Eames.

Arthur nods, again. It will.  
Eames washes his cup and makes like he’s going to leave but hovers by the door instead. There’s a tremulous feeling in the air and Arthur can tell that none of them want to break it up.

“Stay, Eames. It’s too late to care about what is proper. The bed is big enough.” Mal’s voice is soft, the words barely more than a whisper.

Eames smiles in relief. In his head, Arthur does the same.

Arthur ducks into the bathroom to change and brush his teeth. When he comes back Eames is down to his boxers. Arthur stares. Mal winks.

“Bathroom’s free.” His voice is low and Arthur curses himself for being so affected by a bit of skin.

“Ta, love.”

Arthur lies down on the bed with Mal and she curls up next to him like she always does, face to face, everything in the world blocked out but each other.

He says, “I know what you’re doing, with Eames.” 

She kisses him on the cheek. “I just wish you to be happy.”

“When did you remember what you saw, with Grandfather?”

“When Eames and I were walking back from my grave, we passed the men in the truck, the ones who were watching you. I think I recognised them on some level, but It wasn’t until I started telling the story that it came to me.”

Eames comes back and Mal pulls him in to the other side of the bed and curls up again between them. Arthur and Eames look at each other above her, searching for… something. Eames smiles gently and closes his eyes.

Arthur lies back, marvelling at how fast his life has changed, again. This morning, it was just him and Mal against the world, and now it’s him and Mal and Eames and he can breathe a little easier.

He sleeps soundly, for the first time since they’d gone on the run.

  
  
  


Arthur wakes up to the smell of coffee and the sound of Mal and Eames singing a duet. The singing is half-whispering and as such is not the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard but the fact that they care enough to at least try to be quiet makes it all the more lovely. He leans into his pillow and basks in the feeling of waking up actually rested and not jerked awake by a nightmare. He takes a moment to just stay in bed with the feeling, the sun coming in, the coffee in the air, the happiness in Mal and Eames' voices. He feels lighter than he has in a while.

He gets up and is assaulted by the look of Eames in boxers and his open shirt from yesterday. He’s making croissants and orange slices, and by that Arthur means he is pulling croissants that Arthur had picked up at the market out of a bag and cutting up oranges.

Mal is making coffee, her hands sure and solid on the frother. She smiles when she sees he’s awake. “No bad dreams last night.”

“Yeah.” Before coffee he is not the most vocal, so he hopes his tone conveys his happiness.

He sits up. Eames looks over and smiles at him open and bright and Arthur is suddenly very conscious that he is in his pyjamas bottoms and t-shirt.

He lets himself be caught in Eames’s look and it feels dangerous and like coming home and altogether too much. He looks away to collect himself.

He gets up and stretches, still feeling Eames’ eyes on him. “Good morning.”

“Morning yourself, darling.” Eames’ reply is a little gruff.

Arthur goes over and leans into Mal for a moment. “Morning to you too.”

She pinches him. “You’re in the way of the mugs. Move if you want coffee.”

He laughs and leaves, picking up the table and bringing it outside to the balcony, moving some pots to make space.

The air smells like oranges and coffee and marigolds and lavender. It's hot, but not as hot as it will be and the city is coming to life around him. He waves at an elderly woman leaving the apartment. There’s no sign of the men from yesterday, which further cements his contempt of them. What kind of criminal gives up on surveillance because they lost the target once?

Eames knocks him away from his thoughts and brings out the plates, along with tubs of honey and jam and butter. “Darling,” he says, “What a charming flat you have! Here you are, surrounded by your own little plant empire. Utterly delightful.” He leans into the railing next to Arthur and they look out at the street. A bee leaves the bee hotel and lands on Eames’ hair. Eames smiles up at it.

Arthur goes in to get the coffee. There’s a cup for him, one for Eames, and one for Mal. He looks at her in confusion.

“If we’re going outside, I thought I could take a cup and savour the smell while you eat. We can put it in the fridge after and you can have iced coffee.” She picks it up and goes out to join Eames. Arthur follows her.

They set about eating and drawing up battle plans. 

Mal says, “I had a thought. If I somewhat recognise the men in the car, then they might recognise me as well. They might think I’m dead. So what if I follow them around and fuck with them? Appearing and disappearing, some ghostly object levitation and such. Try and freak them out enough to leave.”

“That sounds good.” Arthur notes it in his moleskin.

“I was thinking too,” says Eames. “It might be a good idea for you to ‘die’ to throw these people off their tracks, and for you to start your new life as someone else. Only thing is, you’d need a body.”

Arthur considers this. It does make sense, and if one of their stalkers winds up being about his height and build, that would kill two birds with one stone. Well. Two people with one body. He jots in down, along with some other practicalities. Mal and Eames discuss ways she can use her ghost powers to scare. The sun is bright, turning his pages to white and he gives up on writing, just watching Mal and Eames talk in the warmth of the morning. 

  
  
  


Eventually, their stalkers do decide to do their jobs and arrive, forcing Arthur to duck inside to get dressed. Mal is still laughing with Eames about her haunting plans, the two of them huddled together over their coffees.

They file out of the apartment together and then part ways with hugs, Eames and Arthur upstairs to work on a new identity, Mal to wreak havoc in the streets.

Eames’ apartment is a different world from the cheerful yellow of Arthur and Mal’s.

It smells like turpentine and tea and ink and paper. It’s deep and cool, shot through with green golds and blues. Across one wall is a mural of a jungle. Canvases are laid in a pile against it. Arthur thinks he recognised some of the art on them — paintings that stirred half-forgotten memories of being at the Met as a child, before his world had become about running and killing and darkness. 

There is plenty of furniture thrown around, hidden under paint-splattered drop-cloths, haphazardly placed in a sort of strange labyrinth of chairs and tables and poofs. Some look like they’ve just been dragged up from a flea market while others are clearly parts of incredibly expensive sets. He wonders if Eames has stolen them.

Eames throws open the curtains to let in a little more light. He grabs some clothing from a pile by the bed and gets dressed in wide shorts and a tank top. He takes his time, like he doesn’t care if Arthur looks at him or not. Arthur looks away because he needs to. When he catches Eames eye again, Eames is grinning.

He starts shoving things around, canvases and easels, boxes of paint and gesso and mediums. He makes vague apologies for the mess, but Arthur waves them away. The mess isn’t a mess really, not in a frustrating or embarrassing way. It feels like a natural extension of Eames. It’s the home of some with too much in their head and no one to share it with. 

He does help tidy though, if only because there are tea stained cups on the ground next to an easel and Eames is dangerously close to stepping on them.

Once Eames has deemed the place clean enough he yanks a piece of art off the wall directly opposite the window. There are clips hanging down from the ceiling and he hangs a white sheet between them, as well as grabbing a camera from a box above the fridge.

Finally, he turns to Arthur. “Sorry about that darling. I thought we might start with the photo so that you can be fresh and non-sweaty in it — not that you aren’t devastating when you are sweaty, of course — and after we can faff about with the details, hmm?”

Arthur says, abruptly because he’s a little overwhelmed by the force of Eames at work, “Yes. That works.”

“Your condescension, as always, is much appreciated, Arthur, thank you.” Eames winks at him, grinning. 

Arthur lets Eames manoeuvre him into position, blinding him a little with the sun. It’s easy for Arthur to look serious in his passport photos, as that is the natural shape of his face and today is no exception.

Eames though, immediately exclaims about how lovely Arthur looks. He turns the camera so Arthur can look, but all he can see is a serious man slightly uncomfortable being photographed.

Eames sighs. “It’s your eyes, pet. They can’t hide who you are.”

Satisfied, he hangs the art back up. They move to opposite couches and Eames brings out a black passport, a card printer, and a scrap of paper. “So Arthur. Who do you want to be?”

And Arthur curses himself. All his plans and he’s never thought about a new name. It makes him sad, a little, shedding this part of him that has defined him for so long — Arthur Cobol, part of a family he loves, son and uncle and cousin and nephew.

He looks at Eames. “Who do you think I should be?”

“Your own man. Free from your past.”

Arthur gives him a sardonic look. “You know what I mean.”

Eames just smiles back. “I do. But my point still stands. And since you apparently have no imagination, I will have to inspire you. Do you want to keep Arthur?”

It’s probably an inadvisable idea, but he does. He can let go of Cobol, let go of that person, but he wants to keep his own name. He nods.

Eames considers him. “How about Coeurdelyon? Like a lion heart. A little courage to start your new life.”

“How about something a little less ostentatious?” 

“Don’t give me that.” Eames grins. “You couldn’t think of anything and it is a perfectly serviceable last name. And it’s a reminder to live your own life.” He makes a little note on his paper.

Arthur swallows and looks away, focusing on the edge of a canvas that’s escaped from the staple holding it down. “Okay. Let’s try it. Although, maybe just Lyon. I can’t think of anything else.”

Eames nods. “You’re right. You’re not the sort for a big last name. Lyon, compact and sharp, waiting to pounce.”

He gets busy doing whatever it is that forgers do that transforms empty things into works of art. Arthur makes coffee.

Eames doesn’t seem to need him for this part, and while he could check on the bugs or try to make sense of the chemical compound information he and Mal stole, or any of the hundreds of things he needed to do, he doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to leave this little sanctuary of Eames’. He sits on the soft blue couch in front of the mural, drinking coffee and letting the sun hit him. The warmth makes him sleepy, the quiet noise of Eames at work lulling him away. He slips off his shoes and lays out, sleeves rolled up, shirt unbuttoned in the heat, hair curling. 

He sleeps.

When he comes back to consciousness, he can feel Eames’ eyes on him. He turns and slowly opens his eyes. Eames has stopped working on the birth certificate he’d been doing when Arthur had fallen asleep and is instead just watching him. Arthur blushes.

Eames says, carefully, “Darling, do you mind terribly if I sketch you?”

Arthur, still half asleep, just nods. “It’s okay.”

Eames makes some space for his sketchbook, which he pulls out from under his couch. He stands. “Just going to grab a pen, don’t move, love."

There’s a large canvas covered by a drop cloth that falls, revealing dark painted shape Arthur can’t make sense of. He watches the line of Eames’ body as he moves, how comfortable he is in this space, the way the sun and shadow play across his chest. He leans across the painting to reach a cup full of pens, his shirt riding up. When he settles back down he smiles gently at Arthur, a softer smile than he’s used before.

Arthur blushes,  _ again _ , at having been caught looking at Eames. He tries to turn but Eames stops him.

“No, no, darling. Stay as you were. Yes, that’s it. Gorgeous.”

He winds up facing Eames, trying to avoid eye contact. He takes in the tattoos, the way the tank hugs him, the way his face is when he concentrates on the page, the way it feels when he concentrates on Arthur, looking at him, following lines with his eyes. He can feel the distance between them, the table, the mugs, the rug, but at the same time it doesn’t matter. They are here and this moment its own world. No hurry, no need to change or rush in or even touch, it is just enough to be.

Eames works on his sketch and Arthur feels inside his body in a way he hasn’t since he and Mal went on the run, Eames’ looks making him aware of the different parts of his body. He watches Eames hands on the pen, sure and swift and thoughtful. He wonders if he’s imagining the feeling building between them.

When Eames is done, he smiles like he has a secret at the paper. Arthur isn’t sure that he wants to see what Eames has drawn, what he sees when he looks at him. Eames lays the paper out in front of him anyways.

And it’s…

Arthur finds it hard to reconcile the drawing on the lush couch and jungle and sprawling figure on it with himself. It’s sexy and raw and the man on the paper looks sensual and halfway debauched, looking at the viewer with too much intensity. It’s heady and intimate and Arthur hopes that he hasn’t given himself away that much.

Eames is watching him look at the drawing. Arthur closes his eyes and retreats a little inside himself again, not quite ready to give himself over to Eames entirely.

“It's good.” His voice is rough.

Eames leans back in his chair with a slight smile. Arthur tries to compose himself. He reminds himself that he has a lot of work to get done. He can’t stay here forever with Eames.

“I need to check on the bugs. I’ll leave you to the passports?” He doesn’t mean for it to be a question but it slips out.

Eames laughs. “You go, pet. I’ll be down later.”

Arthur nods and stands up straight, going home without looking back.

  
  


In the evening, Mal comes home. She’s lit up in a way Arthur hasn’t seen since she died, exhilarated and breathless. She has a mountain of stolen food in her arms, breads and cherries and fish and peas. Eames follows the smell of Arthur’s cooking and joins them not long after and soon their tiny apartment is filled with warmth and snapshots of happiness — Mal’s mouth open wide in a laugh, Eames cutting up peppers to go with the fish, waving the knife around as he talks, both of them including Arthur in their grins, letting him be quietly present, not asking anything of him that he wasn’t ready to give.

Eames and Arthur wind up stripping more and more as the cooking continues and the heat from the oven mixes with the heat outside. The sun gets lower but, this close to the solstice, won’t set for hours yet.

There’s no sign of the stalkers, so they tumble out on the balcony to lounge in the chairs and drink wine from the bottle.

Arthur gets pleasantly drunk and laughs when Mal starts acting out the fright she gave the men. They had been sent by their grandfather, it turns out, and they do recognise her and know that she should be dead. Then Mal collapses back into her chair and the three of them move on to other topics, drinking late into the night, laughing and whole.

*

Eames wakes up sprawled on Arthur and Mal’s bed, alone. The murmuring of Arthur and Mal filters in through the open windows, along with a slight breeze blowing the curtains around. He leans back into the pillows and marvels at how fast life can change. A week ago he’d been alone in his flat, contemplating his own interminable loneliness, and now he is here, waking up content in a flat with two people who marched into his life and heart like an invading army, hellbent on making him feel loved. It should be too much. It should be terrible and overwhelming, but it’s not. It’s just wonderful.

He grabs the mug of coffee left on the counter for him and joins them outside, blinking in the light. There’s pain au chocolate on a plate in the middle of the table and Eames takes a bite, winking cheerfully at Arthur. Mal grins at him from where she’s inspecting her bee house.

Arthur smiles at him briefly and goes back to working on something in his moleskin, frowning a little at it. It’s pretty adorable, the little furrow in his brow, the way he taps his pen against his lips. Eames leans over to take a look. It’s a long to-do list, the letters cramped and small, shoved up together on the page like Arthur is trying to make the notebook last as long as possible.

“Ah, Arthur, do you know what today is?” Eames clasps a hand on his shoulder. Arthur looks up at him. Eames leans back and pulls Mal’s hand in for a quick kiss. “Today is the day we kill you.” He takes another bite of his pastry.

Arthur rolls his eyes good-naturedly. “That’s all well and good to say, Mr. Eames, but there’s more work to be done than that.”

He flips open his moleskin to a page with notes about how to turn the dead body of someone into the dead body of Arthur. “Mal found one of the men who fits my general dimensions, so we have a body. Or, we will have a body. It’ll take a bit of work to make it so he looks enough like me, but hopefully we’ll be able to fool people long enough to come up with a new plan.”

The list, or at least what Eames can see of it, says  _ bring my clothes, smash teeth in, get rid of fingerprints (burn or cut off), leave gun, put ID in pockets.  _ Eames is impressed by the thoroughness of it and absolutely refuses to feel daunted by the task in front of them.

Arthur is watching him. He says, “I can go alone, if it’s too much for you. God knows I’ve done enough killing to do it myself. You can help Mal.”

Eames shakes his head. “No, I’ll come. You need backup to help get the body dressed and Mal is more than capable of distracting the others on her own.”

Arthur nods and sips his coffee, still watching him.  
  


In the end, the hit goes off without a hitch. Arthur was right — he didn’t need Eames’ help. He’s a true pro, shooting the guy while he’s in a back alley, smashing his face in with the butt of his gun and flicking off his fingertips with a knife. 

Eames realises he hasn’t seen Arthur in his element before. It’s alarmingly hot. He’s got an ease with weapons, pulling them from seemingly thin air and handling them like it’s nothing. It’s viscerally clear that he’s extremely competent and Eames finds himself short of breath and far too aroused to be comfortable standing over a dead body.

The whole thing is over and done in less than five minutes. The only struggle is getting Arthur’s slim trousers onto the body, but with a bit of shoving and sweat they manage to slide them on. They leave the body close enough to the street someone is guaranteed to find it and slip away.  
  


They take the metro in curling paths for an hour to make sure they lose anyone who might have seen them and wind up in the Tuileries. They’re both sweaty, from the hit but also from the crush of people in the metro, so Eames revels in walking along the paths, taking respite in the cool bliss of the shade.

Arthur, though, is quiet and drawn, frowning ever so slightly. Eames doesn’t really know what to say, so they just be together quietly until Arthur gathers himself enough to say, “I don’t want my mom to hear I’m dead. I can’t reach out to her, because she’s so heavily in that world and I hate to think of what they’ve told her. But I don’t want her thinking I’m dead.”

There’s not really anything Eames can say to that, so they walk on. At one point, Eames reaches out and grabs his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze, then letting it go. Arthur’s face is still a little lost, a little small, so Eames looks around for something to distract him.

And — there! — he finds something. “Do you see that woman there? The one with the kids, next to the man who looks like a statue?” The man is very stiff. The only part of him moving is his eyes, darting around the park. The woman is talking to him and smiling. She looks a little confused every time he doesn’t smile back. Eames says, “she’s his mistress, but she doesn’t know it. He’s hoping his wife hasn’t also decided that today is a nice day for a park.” 

Arthur doesn’t quite smile, but his face clears a little.

Eames points to two teens standing by the fountain. One of them has his hands on the others shoulder, looking like he’s a teacher explaining something simple very patiently. As they look, Eames watches him say  _ nous savons tous les deux que c’est pour le mieux. _ Eames chuckles. “They just snuck away from a school trip to the Louvre. Messy messy breakup incoming.”

Arthur looks at him.

“Watch, you’ll see.”

And Eames is right. All of a sudden the teen being talked to pushes the other one away and grabs a handful of water, throwing it at him. “Putain! Je ne sais rien, connard!” He throws more water, then a handful of pebbles he picks up from the path.

Arthur starts to smile and Eames pulls him along to get out of the path of any incoming thrown rocks. They pass a young woman sitting alone, looking carefully at the building across the street.

“Architecture student, probably about to get involved in a criminal underworld.”

Arthur laughs. “Bullshit, you can’t know that!” His dimples are fully out now, and their hands brush together as they walk.

Eames smiles at him. “I might!”

They laugh together and walk on.  
  


Eventually, Mal joins them. She’s just barely visible in the sun, little more than a whip of colour and the thought of a person. She leans into Arthur and gets a little firmer. Arthur kisses the top of her head.

They’ve run out of shade and it’s damnably hot, so Eames leads them to an ice cream truck. He buys a cone for Arthur and a cone for himself and they both wind up with ice cream melting on their faces. Although, it must be said that Arthur is still far neater than Eames.

Mal, laughing at both of them, is singing a song about ice cream and messes to tease them, and Eames has a pang in his chest. Everything in this moment is beautiful, Mal’s half laugh half singing voice, Arthur wiping his face and trying to look unaffected, even though a dimple has been peeking through for a while, the taste of chocolate on Eames’ tongue, the leaves waving above them, casting mottled shadows across Arthur’s eyelids. He wishes he could just live in this moment forever, that there wasn’t uncertainty of the Cobols’ after them, that they weren’t on borrowed time, that there wasn’t the certainty that Arthur and Mal would have to go on the run again, using the head start the body would give them.

But for today he had this moment, this golden time wandering through the gardens, full of love and alive and free.

  
  


That night they crowd around the little radio that’s picking up Arthur’s bugs.

They’re inside and dirty from having to sneak in so that none of the men see them, and not out on the balcony for the same reason. It’s stifling, but they don’t dare open a window. Arthur is meant to be dead, after all, and dead men don’t care about breezes.

Well, dead men might not, but Mal is complaining loudly.

Eames sits on the edge of the bed and worries the sheet between his fingers. Outside in their truck, the men meet up. They make idle chit chat, waiting for everyone to show up. But the man Arthur killed isn’t coming, obviously, and there’s some confusion. One suggests he bolted after all the strange shit with Mal. There’s silence in the truck and Mal laughs softly.

Eames looks at Arthur. He’s at the table, fiddling with a leftover bug, watching the radio intently. 

One of the men says  _ I’m going to call him. _ The others all agree. And then there’s a shout.  _ They’ve found him! _

_ Who, Antony? _

_ No, you idiot! Arthur! He’s dead! _

There’s a clamour in the truck and it becomes very hard to tell who’s saying what. There’s a general sense of shock though, and then the theories come.

_ Maybe Antony killed him? That’s why he’s late? _

_ Or Cobol hired someone else,  _ one says glumly.  _ He didn’t seem that pleased last time we talked to him. _

_ Well I don’t care how it happened, I’m just glad this whole shit is done. We can get out of this fucking city and go home.  _

There’s general sounds of agreement.  _ Anyone up for a drink? _

The agreement noises rise in volume and they can hear the sound of the truck starting up outside.

Eames tunes it all out and focuses instead on Arthur and Mal’s faces. They’re awash with relief and half hidden in moonlight and shadows. Arthur turns off the radio. The whole flat is muted and dark, gentle and apart from the world.

Arthur leans back in his chair.

They stay like that for a moment, absorbing the news. Then Eames finally opens the window. The night air is light and a neighbour has started playing music loud enough to be clear in the flat.

Mal peels herself out of her chair and comes over to Eames. She grabs his hand and pulls him into a dance, slow and playful. She sings along and Eames joins her, feeling Arthur watching them.

The music shifts and Eames switches them into a proper waltz. Mal follows perfectly and if Eames was into women he would probably be half in love with her.

As it is, he catches Arthur’s eye on a turn. His face softens and something in Eames’ chest tightens.

He lets Mal lead. She circles them a bit and then dances over to Arthur. She presses a chaste kiss on Eames’ cheek. She leaves him there and pulls Arthur into a dance, the two of them doing a flawlessly technical foxtrot.

They move together in a way that speaks to years of balls and galas, loose and just a little showy, even on the tiny kitchen dance floor.

When the song ends Mal deposits Arthur in Eames’ arms. She winks. “I am quite tired now, but you two should keep going, you’re both such marvellous dancers.”

Arthur automatically switches them so that he’s leading and then pauses and looks at Eames awkwardly.

Eames swallows. “By all means darling, lead away. I am quite content to follow you.”

Arthur nods and stands a little stiffly until Eames pulls him in, the bare skin of their arms just touching. It’s too hot to pull Arthur as close and Eames would like, but he will happily settle for this — Mal singing on the bed, jasmine in the air, Arthur in his arms.

They twirl and sway around the kitchen, Arthur carefully keeping them from bumping against the counter and fridge. It’s not technical by any means, but Eames can’t help but think it’s the most perfect dance that’s ever existed.

The song ends and they pause, still holding each other.

Arthur looks at him and Eames can't breathe for the softness in his face. Arthur leans in ever so slowly and kisses Eames. He tastes like honey and sea salt and home and Eames pulls him in close as the heat will let them.

After far too short a time, Arthur pulls away, blushing slightly.

On the bed, Mal whistles.

The kiss is just that, for now, it’s too hot to really have the energy to fuck or get close to a body, (not to mention the awkwardness of Mal watching them), but they go and sleep in the same bed, the covers pulled up halfway, Mal curled up between them.

*

The morning finds Arthur awake far too early and at loose ends. They’ve bought themselves a reprieve, for now, and there isn’t anything pressing on his to-do list. His moleskin sitting on the counter is full of checkmarks and things crossed off and it’s been so long since that was the case that Arthur doesn’t know what to do with himself. 

So he does what he’s always done when he doesn’t know what to do: he goes for a walk. He throws on a presentable shirt and pants and leaves Mal and Eames to their slumber and goes in search of coffee.

He’s the first in at the cafe the next street over and takes advantage of the quiet streets and early morning sun, wandering about, saying hello to the shopkeepers and delivery men, like this is really his home, like he’s going to stay here and build a life. They smile and wave back to him.

He winds his way through the neighbourhood and ends up at the cemetery, gazing at the cherubs and lambs that decorate the wrought iron gate. It’s a nice place really, one he would have been happy to give to Mal as her final resting place. Maybe one day, when they are less wanted, less on the run they can come back and buy a proper plot for her. Something more than a hastily dug shallow grave in a dark corner.

He goes to find her grave and make sure it’s still in order after Eames dug it up and then put everything back. The dirt still looks fresh but no one seems to be investigating. The shovel is still there and there aren’t any footprints except for one set that leads to it and then away, which he assumes are from Eames.

It isn’t exactly a pretty space. He makes a vague note to make Mal’s next grave look less like a murderer’s dumpsite.

He sighs.  _ Next time. _ Sooner than he would like. The trick with the body would probably buy him and Mal a month, two if they were lucky. Eventually someone would notice that he was not dead on a medical examiners table and the hunt would be back on. As long as his grandfather still looked for him, they will always have to be one step ahead.

He will miss Eames, when they leave.

He wanders away, trying to clear his thoughts. There’s a well tended church garden on the other side of the cemetery and he takes in the flowers. 

He looks around. So many of the graves have wreaths on them, left by loving families who want the dead to know they are still loved.

He looks at the church flowers again. There are so many, no one would notice if a few went missing…

Eames smiles at him when he comes home. The sun is caught on the flyaway tips of his hair and his face is soft and sweet. Arthur is thoroughly devastated. 

Mal gives him a hug. “Thank you for my flowers.” They’ve wound up in her hair, ghostly and thin as gossamer, the petals slightly bruised from where he’d gripped them too hard when picking them. He’d left them as a hasty bouquet over her body. They look much better here.

The radio is playing on the counter, turned in to the bugs. On it the men grumble about hangovers and  _ goddamn layovers, why does Cobol never spring for fucking first class? _

Once they can hear the men getting into a taxi, Mal pulls away from him. “I don’t want to abandon you, but I think I need to take a long walk today. I’m just…” She trails off. The grief that always lurks in the corners of her face is still there, but it doesn’t seem like it’s going to imminently overwhelm her. She sighs. “My head is full of too many thoughts and I cannot sort them.”

“I can help you with them, if that would make it better. Help put them in their places.”

Mal shakes her head and leans into him, her head resting under his chin. “Merci, mon cher. But there are some things that must be done alone.” She presses a kiss over his heart and blows one to Eames, then dissipates into the air.

The kitchen is dimmer without her and Arthur is lost for a moment, stuck in his head. 

Someone swears on the radio and he jumps a little. Eames snorts a laugh at him.

He’s warming toast in the oven, a delicate process that involves their temperamental broiler and a heavy cast iron pan and Eames watching everything like a hawk. 

Arthur leans against the counter and waits for him to be done. When the four slices of toast have safely departed the oven and been deposited onto the plates, he says, lowly, “Good morning Mr. Eames.”

Eames picks up his hand and kisses it. Arthur tries not to let his face show how much it affects him.

“I thought I might take you on a date today, darling.”

And Arthur knows that he will have to leave Eames eventually, that nothing can last and that the kiss last night had probably been a mistake, but he  _ wants _ . He wants this life, with Eames and Mal and coffee and kisses. He wants a thousand of these quiet moments with Eames and he wants to just let himself have them, for as long as he can.

So he smiles at Eames. “What were you thinking?”  
  


It turns out Eames idea of a date is less dinner and more of a tour of Paris’s least inspiring streets. He pulls Arthur along through a back alley delivery area in the city centre. The street smells like spoiled milk and trash from the industrial garbage bins along the back of buildings.

“Your attempts at romance are falling short, Eames.”

“I do love your faith in me, darling. But worry not! We have arrived.”

What they’ve arrived at is an open garage door with a truck half in it. They slip past the empty cab and Eames turns back to look at him. “Now just act natural, love. Follow my lead and everything will be fine.” With that, they swing around the truck and end up in a large concrete inventory room. It’s filled with shelves. On the one nearest to Arthur is a box labeled  _ Finger Monets, 100pcs. _ Arthur barely has time to boggle at that before Eames hands him a box from the back of the truck. This one says  _ Notebooks, Nudes, 25pcs _ . Eames is holding  _ Magnets, Nude Descending a Staircase, 150pcs. _ He walks purposefully out of the room. Arthur follows.

No one stops them as they walk through narrow halls. Eames asks for directions to the gift shop a few times and talks loudly about the pains of driving a large truck in Paris. Some kind employee even holds the door open for them so they can drop off the boxes with a very confused gift shop cashier.

And with that, they have free entry to the Musé d’Orsay. 

Eames takes Arthur on a tour of his favourite paintings. He makes sure Arthur sees the highlights and takes the time to tell him about the art so that he understands its importance in the world and why Eames loves it. He’s charming and bright and Arthur lets himself be charmed and taken in by it.

On the ground floor, Eames waves at one of Van Gogh’s sunflowers. “They make me think of Mal, now.”

Arthur looks at him.

Eames says, “They’re dead. Van Gogh painted dead sunflowers all the time but no one thinks of them that way. When you think of his sunflowers they’re beautiful and full of life. You don’t even notice the falling seeds and drooping heads.”

Arthur slips his hand in Eames. Their palms rest together, fingers intertwined.   
  


They wind their way up the levels until they reach a massive painting. Eames stops in front of it. “Behold! My future!”

Arthur frowns at it. Besides its size, it doesn’t particularly stand out to him as particularly incredible. Four figures look back at them, a nude woman woman and two clothed men sitting on a picnic blanket in the woods and a woman washing in a stream behind them.

The little plaque next to it says  _ Déjuener Sur l'Herbe, Manet, 1863. _

There’s something familiar about it though. Eames looks at him expectantly.

It takes a second, but Arthur realises that the dark shapes on the canvas in Eames’ apartment could be construed as the shadowy base to a forgery of the painting in front of them.

Eames leans into him. “I know someone who wants this very badly. It caused such a stir when I was first presented — people thought it was scandalous, having that woman so naked like that.”

Arthur looks around at all the other paintings in the gallery that have nude women.

Eames laughs. “They didn’t like that she doesn’t seem to care about being nude, and especially that she doesn’t care outside with two clothed men.”

“Mmm, they didn’t believe that a woman didn't care what others thought about her?”

“They did not. And there’s the problem of the woman in the background.”

Arthur looks. The woman bathing in a stream wasn’t wearing much but she was still in clothes. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s a giant! It’s a proportional nightmare! She’s far away but she looms over them. No one really knows what to make of it. And, it’s a painting that defies genre. It’s a portrait and a landscape and a still life all at once. Brilliant. No wonder my friend wants it.”

Arthur checks the room and leans into Eames even more. Air conditioning hits his neck and he shivers. “It would be hard to pull off. There are at least three cameras in this room that have a clear view of the full painting.”

Eames brings his arm around Arthur and the warmth of his body presses into his back. He whispers in Arthur’s ear, “And a guard in every other doorway.”

Arthur whispers directly into Eames neck. “A nighttime heist then.” His teeth graze Eames’ skin.

Eames shudders. “The Musé is hard to pull off alone, I was thinking I might need a few extra hands.

Arthur plays with the fingers of the hand not around him. “I know some people who might just fit right in.” He kisses Eames’ wrist.

Eames eyes are liquid and he leans into Arthur, lips brushing his cheek. “Darling, I do believe we need a room.”

Arthur laughs aloud, surprising himself, and tugs Eames to the nearest restroom, only to be stopped by a severe looking security guard. The guard doesn’t say anything, just stands in front of the door, looking at them pointedly. The three of them stay in the standoff for a moment. Then Eames grins at the guard, who does not grin back. “Any chance you’ll look the other way while we pop in? Won’t be a moment.”

Arthur takes a second to be slightly offended at his implied lack of stamina.

The guard frowns. He reaches for his walkie-talkie.

Arthur grabs Eames’ arm and they rush down the stairs, out the doors, the guard chasing them, shouting not to run.

Chests heaving, they hop on the metro. There is no privacy, but it doesn’t stop Arthur from dropping biting kisses along Eames jaw between catching his breath and laughing.

They manage to make it back to the apartment, Eames pressing Arthur against the door while he fumbles for the key. Arthurs knees are weak and he stumbles when he gets the door open, nearly tumbling into the floor. Eames catches him in his arms.

And they stop.

Mal is sitting on the bed, head in her hands. The air in the apartment is gray, the curtains drawn, the light bulbs blown to bits. Mal looks exhausted.

Arthur comes over, stepping over the glass from the lightbulbs, his afternoon with Eames all but forgotten. “Mal, what’s wrong?”

He sits next to her on the bed. Eames moves over to the stove, giving them as much space as the apartment allows and starts cleaning up the glass.

Mal leans into him. She leans a little through him as well, but he doesn’t begrudge her the energy. 

She says, quietly, “Grandfather doesn’t believe you’re dead."

Arthur’s stomach drops. Across the room Eames drops the remains of a bulb.

“What?”

“I heard them talking on the bugs. One of them got a call from grandfather. He said they were stupid for just believing you’d died. He’s coming over to personally check.” 

Arthur took a deep breath. He leans a little more into Mal.

“God. Fuck. How fast can we get out of here?”

Mal pulls away and looks him in the eye. “I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to run from him forever. I don’t want him to have that fucking power. I haven’t been sitting here doing nothing. I’ve been working on a plan.”

There’s fire in her voice that’s been missing since he and Eames came in. Eames abandons the glass and comes over. “I’m with you Mal. If he’s coming by jet, there’s still hours before he’ll get here. Let’s begin our War Council.”  
  


Later, while Eames is away getting things and they are in the quiet hours between making the plan and executing it, Arthur curls up with Mal. The papers they stole from their grandfather are scattered across the apartment, along with coffee mugs and torn out pages of Arthurs moleskin. They clear a spot on the bed and just lay there, breathing together.

Mal rubs her hand along Arthur's arm. “I spent the morning thinking — it’s not fair to be on the run all the time, Not to you, or to me. I want us to have a life. I want us to be free. I want to escape this never ending fear. I don’t want to doom you to be always looking behind you.”

“Oh Mal, god, don’t think that. If I have to run, it’s because of my own choices and because grandfather chooses to come after me. And I get to spend the time with you. I will never regret that.”

Mal nods. “I’m glad I chose you, when I came back. I’m glad I found you.”

Arthur smoothed a hand over her hair. The flowers he’d left at her grave are still tangled in her hair. “There’s no one else I’d rather be on the run with.”

Mal laughs. “Well, Eames.”

Arthur smiles. “That’s true. But it’s not you or Eames. No matter what happens between me and Eames, you and I are staying together. I love you.”

He blushes when he realises what he’s said, but he doesn’t take it back. Mal smiles into his arm.

They drift like that together, until Eames comes back, until the time comes to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (please remember to not follow Mal's stealing ways and pay your local farmers for their food!)


	3. Part Three

They wait on the roof. The predawn air is dark and cool and Eames shivers. Arthur’s hair is slicked back, the gel holding for the first time since Eames met him. It’s hot, in a terribly dangerous way. Mal is standing next to Eames, glowing ever so slightly.

Above them the sky is a mottled bruise.

Arthur’s knuckles are white where he’s gripping the silver briefcase. He says, “Are we even sure he’s going to find us up here?”

Eames reaches over and squeezes his hand. Arthur is terribly good looking in his suit and it’s very distracting, especially on no sleep.

Mal looks over the edge of the building. “They’re here.”

Eames goes over to look. Five stories below them, a man is getting out of a car. He’s and is followed inside by three of the men who’ve been after them.

He watches them enter the building and then they go back to waiting.

Mal lets her light fade until she’s just an outline, slipping close to the rooftop door.

Arthur and Eames check their guns.

The minutes tick anxiously by.

And then they hear the echo of steps and voices climbing towards them.

The first person out the door is one of their stalkers. He throws it open, half turned back to argue with the man behind him. Arthur clears his throat. The man looks over and his face drains. Eames takes second to dart out and punch him in the face, grabbing his gun.

Gratifyingly, the man crumples to the floor.

Mr. Cobol steps over him. He’s severe, white hair close cropped, face smooth in the way that only the very rich can afford. His coat is a heavy blue, trimmed in fox fur. He looks at Arthur, entirely unsurprised.

“I told you he wasn’t dead, you fools.”

This is clearly to the other men. They shuffle in after him. Cobol doesn’t look at them. His eyes are stuck on the briefcase.

“I see you’ve found some of my things.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Eames sees a sliver of movement. There’s a shout and then the men are missing their guns. He grins.

Cobol looks over in surprise. “You really are the most useless—” He swears, then looks at Eames appraisingly. “And who is this?”

Arthur smiles. “Eames has… certain talents that I find useful.”

Eames puts on his most threatening glower. Cobol nods and turns back to the briefcase.

“Do you know what you have there, Arthur? Do you understand the rare treasure you stole from me? I could live if you had just burned down my home. I got more from the insurance than I ever would have made on a sale. But those papers… vanishingly few people have a copy of that formula and even fewer have those schematics.”

Eames shifts. The truth is, they sort of understand what the drug is. It’s a truth serum of sorts, even if they don’t have the chemistry background to understand what the compound actually does. But as much as they had poured over the schematics, they couldn’t for the life of them get what the machine would do, besides maybe give the same truth drug to several people at the same time.

Cobol can see the hesitation in Arthur and he grins.

“You don’t, do you. Oh, Arthur, have you misunderstood what’s been happening? Did you hear rumours of torture and think I was just a sadist? Oh, dear Arthur. This is so much more than that.”

Arthur tightens his gap of the case but doesn’t say anything. Cobol turns his voice sweeter and Eames can see the grandfather in him. The old man who doted on Mal and watched Arthur grow up, preparing him for his job as a hitman.

There's a fondness in his voice now. “Arthur, there is a whole new world in that case. A new way to get information from people without them ever even realising that you’ve taken it from them. A way, if the theories are correct, to even give people ideas. A new way of doing business entirely.”

Arthur is still just looking at Cobol and Eames remembers how hard it was to leave his family. Cobol sounds reasonable, in a calculated way. 

Cobol smiles and beckons Arthur over. “Let me show you…”

Arthur sighs and clenches his fists tighter. “One question.”

Cobol nods, looking grandfatherly, but his mouth tightens into a grimace for a split second.

Arthur’s voice is cold. “What happened to Mal?”

Cobol freezes. He schools his face into something resembling sadness. “Oh, Mal. Mal. I tried to protect you and the rest of the family from the truth of what she did. That was a mistake, I think, but she was so lovely I couldn’t bear to destroy your memories of her.”

Behind Cobol, Mal is little more than an outline.

Cobol continues. “She betrayed us, you know. She was going to run to the Saitos and sell them information on all of us. She would have gotten us killed. I had to put a stop to it.”

Mal shifts, radiating fury. The lights on the roof flicker in a power surge. Arthur’s eyes track past Cobol to her, then he quickly corrects himself. Luckily, Cobol doesn’t notice.

Arthur says, “So what did you do?”

“I did what I had to. And it worked out quite well — she was a great test subject. We were able to go into her dreams with ease and learn how to keep things real enough that she doubted her own mind and memories. If she was sure what was real, she couldn’t sell anything to Saito.” He pauses and sighs. “Her killing herself was an accident though. We got a little careless with the imagery. We’ve gotten better at that. No subject has killed themselves since.”

There is silence on the roof, the wind rippling past Eames. There is a storm brewing in Mal.

Arthur’s face is deadly blank. Cobol says, “So Arthur, what do you think? Time to come home?”

Arthur smiles. “I think it’s really too bad you decided to kill yourself.”

“What?” Cobol stares at him.

Arthur says, “It really is too bad. But once you knew the feds were on to you, you really felt you had no choice.”

He throws Cobol the briefcase. He rips it open. Inside is a single sheet of paper, a printout of an email confirmation of documents sent to the FBI. He swears.

“I’m not throwing myself off a building just because you fucking say so. Or just because you sent some things to the feds. I have people there, you know. All I have to do is make one phone call and I’ll get it all back.”

Arthur snorts. “Of course not. But here’s the thing: you don't have a choice.”

He smiles at Mal.

Cobol turns and goes white. Behind him, Mal shines, bright as the moon. She gives a little wave. ‘Hello, grandfather.”

She stalks forward. “I would say it’s nice to see you again, but I’ve had enough of the lies tonight. So I’ll just say this — I am more than anything you ever thought I was. I am not a silly girl. I am not a future wife. I am not a betrayer. I am Mal, and I belong to my goddamn self.”

Cobol backs up with every step she takes forward. She backs him up right to the edge of the roof and reaches her arms around him in a perverse hug. She leans close. “And I am going to destroy you.”

And then they tip over the edge together.

*

The police question them. The dawn light mixes with the flashing red and blue and the whole building is woken up, blearily giving statements, most of which, Arthur is pleased to find, have no helpful information at all.

The identity Eames made him holds up. The police glance at it and tiredly nod along as he and Eames explain that they’d been having an early morning smoke on the roof when a man had come up, distressed about something in his briefcase. They’d been too shocked when he’d jumped to do anything but call the police.

The detectives finish with them quickly, two men with no connections to Cobol. From what Arthur can tell, they’re more interested in discovering what crimes Grandfather had committed than figuring out if he had actually killed himself.

When they get inside Mal is leaning on the balcony, watching her bees. She smiles when she sees them.

“Any trouble?”

Eames scoops her up in a hug. Arthur says, “None at all.”

Her eyes are shining. “Arthur. We’re free. It’s over.” She lets go of Eames and pulls Arthur in close. He rests his chin on her hair, her head against his heart. 

Arthur’s breathing is shaking, his chest heaving dangerously.

“I thought you might have been gone.” It had been a worry he’d been suppressing, this fear that in exposing the truth of Mal’s death, she would pass on to whatever comes after ghosthood. 

But here she is, solid and real, pressed in against him. He buries his face in her hair. She doesn’t smell of anything, being a ghost, but he can hide the few tears that are threatening to escape.

“Of course not, mon cher. I have far too much to do. This is the only afterlife I want.”

They stay like that for a moment, Arthur breathing her in, Mal rubbing his back. Then she leans back against the balcony and Arthur remembers that Eames is still here. The flowers brush against Mal’s arms like they too want to reassure themselves that she’s still here. 

The sun streams over them all, but there are clouds on the horizon being blown in by the wind. The end of the heatwave is coming.

Arthur looks back into the apartment. They are free, or as free as they can be under the circumstances. Grandfather is dead and his men, once they’d come to, hadn’t been keen on staying around and risking another encounter with Mal. They’d been long gone by the time the police had shown up.

The apartment itself is a mess. His grandfather had ransacked it before he’d found the note from Arthur, wanting to meet on the roof. 

The papers with the schematics are still piled neatly upstairs, in Eames’ apartment.

Eames follows his gaze into the apartment. “So. Dreams, huh?”

“Yeah,” says Arthur softly. Dreams. There are a thousand future possibilities spinning out in front of him. 

But they can wait.

He looks over at Mal. “What grandfather said… are you okay?”

Mal is distracted but she smiles tiredly. “I will be, I think. Eventually.”

She takes a deep breath. “I need to process it though, I think. I just… It’s a lot.” She shakes her head. “Maybe we can find a therapist who believes in ghosts?”

It would take some research, but not impossible, probably. He nods. “If you want one, I will find one.”

She smiles. “I love you dearly, Arthur. You are so good to me.” 

He blushes and ducks his head. “Of course.”

She laughs. “I’m going to the market. We’re dangerously low on wine.”

She gives Eames a kiss on the cheek and squeezes Arthur’s hand.

On her way out she snags a bag off one of the chairs, slipping it delicately between her fingers. Arthur and Eames watch her leave.

Eames says, quietly, “She’s very strong, our Mal. She’ll be okay.”

Arthur “And she’ll have us, for when she’s not.”

Eames smiles tenderly. He picks up Arthur's hand and traces patterns on his skin. “And what about you? Will you be okay?”

Arthur brings Eames’ hand to his lips. “Yes, Mr. Eames. I will.”

The moment hangs between them, the warmth of Eames across Arthur’s lips, the tender want on Eames’ face. The clouds are over them now, and tiny raindrops land on Arthur’s skin. He shivers.

Arthur lowers his hand and pulls Eames in for a kiss. 

Eames’ breath is hot against his lips and then his mouth is on Arthur’s, and he sighs at the  _ rightness _ of it, Eames’ body pressed against his, hands coming up to cradle Arthur’s head, real and firm and so  _ hot _ Arthur can barely think.

He pushes back, mouth open and dangerous, his own hands bunched up in Eames’ shirt like he if he can just hold on to him forever Eames would never leave, never stop kissing him. He takes a step forward and there is no part of him that isn’t singing  _ Eames, Eames, Eames _ .

Eames stumbles back half a step and they bang into the table, knocking over a pot of daisies. Arthur snorts and tears his mouth away so he can giggle into Eames’ neck. They take a second to right the pot and scoop the dirt back into it, then Eames pulls him inside.

Arthur’s plans to just shove Eames onto the bed are stalled. The bed is covered with his things from Grandfather’s men. They work together to clear it, which mostly consists of shoving everything in Mal’s open suitcase and pushing it under the bed.

Arthur pauses when they’re done. “Mal can go into dreams on her own, you know.”

Eames inhales. “Well isn’t that interesting.”

Arthur nods. If they can find a decent chemist… There are some experiments that he’d like to try.

Eames kisses the corner of his mouth. Arthur turns into him and gets pulled into a full body kiss. Eames’ fingers wind through his hair, loosening the gel. Arthur groans, tightening his hands at the small of Eames’ back.

Eames’ hands move down to Arthurs neck, then cup his face, thumbs brushing along his jaw. Arthur takes a harsh breath, lost in the feel of Eames’ rough calluses against his skin.

Slowly, Eames presses off Arthur’s jacket, and it falls to the floor. Eames keeps pressing kiss after toe-curling kiss to Arthur as he unbuttons his shirt, sending it to the floor as well.

Arthur shudders as Eames’ hand runs down his bare chest. Eames pulls back to admire him and Arthur feels himself blushing and distracts himself by pushing off Eames’ tee shirt.

Eames reels Arthur in again grinning. He brings his mouth close to Arthur’s ear and bites it. Arthur groans and his knees give out. Eames catches him. He whispers, “Aren’t you beautiful, darling.”

Arthur pulls Eames in for a bruising kiss. 

They gasp together, and Arthur is hard in his pants and he can feel Eames is too. He scrambles to push Eames’s pants and underwear down. Eames shakes them off and steps out of them, fumbling with Arthur’s fly.

Arthur pushes his hands out of the way and gets in undone. Eames is on him in an instant, shoving his pants down. Arthur laughs and gets rid of them.

The second they are both naked, Eames backs Arthur up to the bed.

Arthur’s thighs hit the mattress and he moves up the bed, the sheets whispering along his body. Eames follows him, crawling above him. Arthur’s cock brushes against Eames’s chest and he groans, head back.

Eames laughs, low and throaty.

He’s completely above Arthur now, blacking everything else out.

Eames is golden skin is spread out above him like the sky, caging him in, and Arthur has a wild thought about those ancient Greeks who had no use for the word blue but instead called things as they felt, that wine dark sea and dazzling bronze sky and under Eames like this Arthur thinks he understands.

Arthur raises up, trying to capture Eames’ lips but Eames pulls back.

Arthur whines.

Eames says “Darling—“

And crashes into him, body against body, lips against lips. Everything is hot and Arthur ruts up, dragging his cock along Eames’, gasping and letting out a litany of swear words.

Eames is thrusting just as hard, placing wet messy kisses against Arthurs jaw, his arms braced against the bed just enough to keep him from crushing Arthur.

Arthur comes, burying his face in Eames neck with a sob. Eames continues to thrust for a few moments and then follows Arthur, crashing down, pinning him to the bed, every part of them touching.

Arthur takes a breath, letting the feeling of Eames around him wash over him, tired and so much in love. He closes his eyes and kisses the closest part of Eames he can reach, which ends up being his ear.

Eames huffs out a laugh and kisses him back.  
  


Later, after they are clean and the bed is presentable, Mal comes home. She’s lighter and bright as she smiles indulgently at them. The tension in her shoulders has eased and she’s carrying flowers and wine.

She gives Arthur a knowing look and he busies himself looking through the cupboards for something to put the flowers in.

Eames says, “Mal! Lovely, you’re back. I have so much to discuss with you!”

Arthur groans.

She and Eames hug and confer quietly together. They both steal looks at him and then laugh. The sound fills the little apartment.

The best Arthur can find is one of the water glasses that came with the apartment, with little yellow polkadots. He has to cut quite a bit of stem off the flowers lest they tip the cup over. They do look very happy on the counter though. Cheerful yellow blooms for a yellow kitchen.

Mal makes coffee and the apartment fills with the gentle smell. There is a cool breeze coming in and Arthur lets himself enjoy the moment, the warm mug in his hand, the people he loves across from him. 

Mal picks Arthur's hand on the table and grips his fingers. Eames closes his hand over both of theirs.

They are here. They are safe. The world is in front of them.

Arthur closes his eyes and lets himself be loved. 

_ fin _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading <3 stay safe, wherever you are
> 
> follow me on [tumblr](https://theskyandsea.tumblr.com)


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